PISCATAWAY — In a league whose early season spotlight falls on two-time Olympic gold medalist and Western New York Flash forward Abby Wambach, Sky Blue FC is exactly where it wants to be.

Unlike several of its competitors, Sky Blue boasts a roster void of a household name. Australian Lisa De Vanna and Portland University forward Sophie Schmidt, who have each scored five goals, lead the Blues on offense. Scoring spreads between seven players this season, while eight Blues have recorded assists — including three each from forward Danesha Adams and midfielder Katy Freels Frierson.

In fact, it is the key to a revamped business model Hofstetter and his team are using to build not only a club but a thriving league.

Sky Blue FC represents one of three surviving teams following the dissolution of the five-team Women’s Professional Soccer league in 2012 after a five-year run. During its run in the league, Sky Blue finished with five winning seasons and a championship in 2008.

Following the fold, Hofstetter — who invested in the club in 2007 — became the spearhead of a campaign to establish women’s professional soccer in the U.S. alongside foreign leagues and the WNBA.

Despite the loss of several front-office staffers and some homegrown talent on the field — including New Brunswick native Heather O’Reilly and Basking Ridge’s Tobin Heath — Hofstetter held onto one key piece: head coach Jim Gabarra.

With Gabarra — a 10-year coach with the Washington Freedom — remaining on staff through a year-long absence, Sky Blue is in position to achieve sustainable success in the near future.

Following a draw with FC Kansas City, the Blues (8-2-3) remain atop the standings and in the hunt for a league championship in August.

Even better news for Sky Blue FC? The best talent has yet to hit the field.

Like several other teams in the league, Sky Blue FC has been plagued by both out-of-club duties and injury through the first half of the season. Many of those coming back from injury are natural starters on this team. De Vanna, who also plays for the Australian national team, has been out the last few weeks with an injury, while forward Kelley O’Hara returned against FC Kansas City on Wednesday after being sidelined by an ankle injury.

“I’ve been saying all year that we’re not a team where one person is going to score,” Gabarra said. “Our scoring is very spread out, and they’ve done a great job when there is a couple players are struggling.”

The NWSL has since joined forces with three other federations — including the USSF and neighboring Canada and Mexico — with hopes of expanding into the international market. Subsidizing from those organizations allows the NWSL to trade away player salaries to keep costs lower than ever in women’s professional soccer history. The league is also in negotiations to add at least one new club next year, with a possible second during the next few months.

Still, the challenges facing the NWSL are the same as those that have bothered leagues past.

National team play — especially for Australian and European players — forces Sky Blue and its competition to play without a steady roster through a majority of the season. Despite plenty of interest in expansion, limitations to additional clubs in the future stem from a shallow talent pool in the United States. And with ever-declining player salaries, international talent will be hard to draw.

“It’s disruptive to the rhythm of a team,” Gabarra said. “But it gives us opportunities for other players to step in. When everybody’s here, we have a lot of good choices. It’s a very versatile team.”

Hofstetter and his staff picked a team that doesn’t need a star on the field.

“The season is long,” Hofstetter said. “It’s a lot of games in a condensed period of time, plus the national team players have to go to national team practices and camps, so you cannot carry a team with a star player. A sustainable team won’t have a star player or two.”

Perhaps Hofstetter found the right formula.

With Wambach as the face of the franchise, the Western New York Flash are currently 5-2-4 and stand at fourth in the league. U.S. national teammate Hope Solo’s club, Seattle Reign (1-9-2), is the league’s bottom feeder.

Meanwhile, Sky Blue FC boasts two U.S. national team members — O’Hara and 38-year-old captain Christie Rampone — who are thriving under a much smaller spotlight. Rampone has started each game this season, while O’Hara has four assists in 10 games.

“It’s kind of nice that we don’t have all those star,” said forward Sophie Schmidt, who has more than 100 caps for Canada. “They don’t have to carry us. We have people that play really well with one another, and it’s just a great group of girls. Anybody can step up to the occasion so that makes it, I think, probably more challenging for other teams to play against us.”

The immediate goal for Hofstetter and the team is to host a semifinal match at Yurcak Field, one of the league’s two grass pitches.

But in terms of sustainability, it’s all about the money. Sky Blue FC’s attendance is up from its lowest, 688, to an average crowd of more than 2,000. In the league as a whole, attendance hovers at just below 5,000 per game compared to the WPS’s 3,900 average. There were 16,479 fans present at Olympian Alex Morgan’s home opener with the Portland Thorns.

The next frontier for Sky Blue FC remains sponsorship. While the league floats mostly because of local contracts, the Boston Breakers landed Ocean Spray as their sponsor only three weeks into the season. The Blues wear 2nd FLOOR Youth Hotline, a non-profit close to Hofstetter for several years, on their jerseys. But with a home at Rutgers, the marketing opportunities will come, Hofstetter said.

Just maybe, for Sky Blue FC and women’s professional soccer as a whole, the stage has finally been set for success.